Publications
Using stochastic models to describe and predict social dynamics of web users
Abstract
The popularity of content in social media is unequally distributed, with some items receiving a disproportionate share of attention from users. Predicting which newly-submitted items will become popular is critically important for both the hosts of social media content and its consumers. Accurate and timely prediction would enable hosts to maximize revenue through differential pricing for access to content or ad placement. Prediction would also give consumers an important tool for filtering the content. Predicting the popularity of content in social media is challenging due to the complex interactions between content quality and how the social media site highlights its content. Moreover, most social media sites selectively present content that has been highly rated by similar users, whose similarity is indicated implicitly by their behavior or explicitly by links in a social network. While these factors make it difficult to predict …
- Date
- September 1, 2012
- Authors
- Kristina Lerman, Tad Hogg
- Journal
- ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST)
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1-33
- Publisher
- ACM